


Black Swans

by AaylaSecurity



Series: Memoryless [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of Angst, M/M, Marvel Norse Lore, Norse Mythology - Freeform, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 00:52:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1408924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AaylaSecurity/pseuds/AaylaSecurity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he raised his head, Loki was sitting on one of the rocks, hands idly playing with the loosened entrails of his son, madness and murder in those beloved eyes.</p><p>But it was not real, for Thor could no longer see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Swans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [A_Horse_Called_Hwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Horse_Called_Hwin/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Start Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1305346) by [asktheravens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asktheravens/pseuds/asktheravens). 



> The actual, referenced events in the _Poetic Edda_ are: Loki murdered Balder, and was chained to a rock by his son’s entrails, which had been turned into metal chains. Upon his escape, he unleashed Ragnarok: Odin was eaten alive by Fenrir, who happened to be Loki’s son; Vidarr, Odin’s son avenged him by killing Fenrir; Freyr was killed by the Fire Giant Surtr with his own sword; Tyr died with Hel's hound, and Hel happened to be Loki’s daughter; and of course, Thor died with Jormungandr, who was also Loki’s son. I made slight changes to fit better with the story.

_Touch._

He had been hurt before. 

He had been drowned by the waves of the Northern Sea. He had been pierced by arrows in the chest. He had been crushed beneath a giant’s foot. 

He had been thrown against and impaled by a wall of thorns. He had given birth to leathery children. He had had his limbs, bloody and pulsing, pulled off one by one, then re-attached only through the strands of marrow by which the limbs were tenuously connected to his torso. 

But never like this. 

_Hearing._

Pale blue smoke trailed after him, pouring out of every orifice of his body. For centuries he had thought himself invincible, for the God of Thunder always prevailed. 

Yet, not Jormungandr’s poison. 

His skin drew taut and brittle over his bones. He could no longer hear nor feel the cragged ground under his bloody feet. 

Life, literally, was leaving him. Above him, the sky wept, and the storm was the only thing he could feel. 

_Sight._

He stumbled, and balanced himself by the muscle memory of his dying, dissipating body. Soon that would leave him, too. When he raised his head, Loki was sitting on one of the rocks, hands idly playing with the loosened entrails of his son. 

But it was not real, for Thor could no longer see. There was madness and murder in those beloved grey eyes. Thor wondered whether he was a product of a mind that refused to accept the loss of another sense, or the intentional projection of the thing that wore his brother’s face. 

_Speech._

“To where do you walk, Brother?” The illusion asked. 

Thor was silent. It mattered not whether it was by choice or by circumstance. What poetry, that after centuries of dangerous quests, boisterous feasts and glorious battles, he was to die alone. 

His father perished in the belly of his own grandson. His mother’s life was extinguished by grief, as in the prophecy that she had once gasped in her sleep. His brothers – his dear, dear brothers – Balder, his eyes wide and jaw slack in a silent scream, killed by a brother too cowardly to meet him in combat; Vidarr, so driven by anguish that his killing the Wolf only spurred him to take his own life; Freyr, stabbed in the heart by his own sword; Tyr, locked in an eternal battle with his niece’s hound, disappearing into the flames. 

Around him, the mortals who had worshipped him were fleeing and dying, the oceans red from the rain that poured from the starless sky’s gaping wound. 

“You’re all that’s left, Brother,” Loki whispered, “Alone with the monster that is the downfall of the Gods.” 

_Strength._

Meat flowed out of him in pale blue strands and was blown away by the winds. He could no longer rage. 

_Have you always hated us?_

Loki snorted. “Don’t act as the one wronged. You all had a hand.” 

_Father tried so hard to do right by you. We all did._

“He did, but it was not enough, was it? You had to undo all his work with your arrogance and carelessness. How would the mortals have felt, if the one they had called their protector was ultimately to blame for their suffering?” 

He saw their faces, despairing and insane. He saw Loki, pained and sorrowful, jealous and proud, bitter and enraged, scheming and destructive. He would shut his eyes, had he still had them. 

_Do not exonerate yourself. You always had a choice._

“Then you have learned nothing at all.” 

_Awareness._

Even with his senses dead, he could tell through the reflection in the air. 

_It must be so terrible, to feel your body drained away. If only you could see the ancient corpse that is walking._

Loki’s skin was cool against his, his smile sharp when the first finger breached him. Thor gasped, squeezing his eyes shut. Loki was the thunder and lightning he could never master. 

“Relax,” Loki cooed into his ear, in a manner that was supposedly soothing, “You need not be afraid.” 

He shivered. He should’ve simply nodded and accepted it, but instead he said, “I’m afraid of nothing, least of all _you._ ” He made sure to punctuate the word with disdain. 

His brother glanced up at the roiling thunder clouds and snarled, voice hard, “Yes; what is to fear from the shadow?” 

_You are mine, Thor. Well, were. I wasn’t joking that you drove me mad._

Sometimes Thor felt guilt for leaving his younger brothers to their own devices instead of guiding them, but Loki was so thrilling Thor could not stand not being in his company. 

Like now: Loki writhing under him, electricity cackling around them. They were alone in the aftermath of the battlefield. Thor pounded into him one last time and shuddered, spent at last. 

He slipped out carefully, and hissed in pain when he folded his softening prick into his breeches. Loki lay on his back, panting, lovely with his white skin smudged by mud and the blood of their fallen foes. 

With a flick of his hand Loki cleaned himself up and got dressed. He stood up steadily, as if the coupling had no lingering effect. Thor huffed his displeasure. 

Loki paid him no mind. “I believe,” he said solemnly, “That earned me more than one fuck.” 

He laughed heartily so that his voice didn’t shake. “Only if the first is satisfactory, though I doubt a trickster’s stamina.” 

_If only he'd realized how much the jab had hurt._

“Ah, a challenge and an insult. Pray that you don’t regret it _, Thunderer._ ” 

_But you could have had me, Loki, had you not been such a craven._

“We ought to tell Father,” curled against his brother’s slim back, Thor ran his hand through his darker hair. The afterglow was leaving them, leaving behind stark truths and thorny concerns. 

“Always so thoughtless of your actions,” Loki chided, “Don’t you do your thinking anymore?” 

Thor scoffed, perhaps without bitterness. “Why? When you do it for me so well?” 

He knew that of the two of them, Loki was smarter. He was more thoughtful, more perceptive, more deliberate, while Thor too easily let himself swayed by emotions and the arguments of others. Even when they disagreed, Loki usually proved to be right, and after decades of defeat Thor just deferred to Loki’s judgment. 

But this was finally different. 

“You’re lucky to have so pretty a face, _Princess,_ ” Loki quipped. 

Thor flushed, but from embarrassment or pleasure he could not, _would not,_ say. “Is that right? Out of the two of us, which one is actually called womanly?” 

“Clearly the one who just played a woman’s role.” 

“No more tricks! We ought to tell him on our terms, and sooner rather than later.” 

“No,” Loki said sharply. Thor’s hand stilled. “He will never accept this. I’m sure of it.” 

He was disturbed by the intensity of Loki’s declaration. “How would you know? You don’t know him like I do.” 

“That is exactly how,” Loki exhaled through his nose. 

That was a difficult topic; he should’ve broached it, instead of trying a different line of reasoning for convenience’s sake. “We risk discovery anyway.” 

_Had he been less selfish, had he cared for Loki’s wellbeing enough…_

“If you’re so keen on telling him, do it yourself.” 

“’Twas not I who is called the Silver Tongue, Liesmith.” 

“Right now, I’d rather put it to some other use.” 

Thor sputtered, flustered, “You are just like him! Concealing controversy until disaster strikes.” 

Loki rolled on top of him. “Do not talk of our parents in bed,” and proceeded to rid him of all productive thoughts. 

_And you claim to be different, Brother?_

He had learned it from Loki himself. They had drifted apart, Thor disgusted by Loki’s increasingly distasteful inclinations and Loki estranged by the realms for his inexplicable spite. Outside, another storm raged on. 

“Why? Because I’m Jotun, _and_ the prophesized monster to destroy you all,” he laughed at Thor’s horror and disbelief, “Don’t give me that look. Deep down, you always knew!” 

_If only he had stopped him then. If only he had told Loki he loved him back._

_Power._

_Father carried an infant into the room. From his crib, Thor eyed the strange competitor for his parents’ affections with grim suspicion. “This is your brother, Loki,” he told him, eyes wise and sad._

_When he was older: “Yes, I knew the prophesy. What of it, when it will always come to pass? Shan’t one simply do what is right, regardless of consequences?”_

A vast emptiness, a vacuum that rejected everything, filled him. He was completely alone now. The voice had faded away, leaving behind a regret that he realized was his own. 

_He saw the mortals’ crops that he had helped grow and harvest. He spied Mother making him new sets of armor, and could not stop smiling for a day. He kneeled as Father bestowed upon him Mjolnir and wisdom, finally trusting him to do something right. He told his siblings embellished tales of his adventures, and watched their eyes shine with pride. He felt thunder in his vein, and had never felt more alive._

Those memories were all he had, all he could cling to now. For what was left of Thor, when thunder was taken from him? 

_Loki pushed him against the altar in his own temple._

_“Not here, not now!” he protested feebly, and scowled in dismay when his legs parted on their own volition, “If they see us…”_

What did Loki say then? He struggled to remember… 

_“You’re far more than the Thunderer, Thor,” his brother whispered against his lips, “So, so much more.”_

If Loki hadn’t been different from them…if they…if _he_ hadn’t treated him differently… 

Thor realized with sudden fear: he didn’t want to die. 

Still images reflected by the fog. _The air sweet with summer grass. Loki, not-furrowed forehead against his, youthful, untroubled grey eyes more courageous and shyer than he had ever seen him._

_“I love you.”_

It never had to end like this. 

_Memories._

In his spectral heart, a desire, fiercer and brighter than the Sun, burnt. Thor, and Thor only, would gladly redo it all. He would give up thunder, his Godhood, everything that was his, but for the chance to live with his brother once again, so that it did not end in tragedy. 

_Self._

**Author's Note:**

> "Black swans" refer to catastrophic events that are not revealed in historical data and thus cannot be predicted, and are often inappropriately rationalized after the fact.


End file.
